The Wait Is Over

Updating about our new hizzle. After talking to a dear friend yesterday, and finding out that she was unaware of our upcoming move, I realized that I hadn’t really shared the news with a lot of people. Not intentionally…I’ve just been busy working two jobs and planning birthday parties, etc. Just busy with life, really.

Anyways…here’s my update.

Remember the house drama that went down about six weeks ago, and THIS post I wrote afterwards? Well…we waited. We didn’t know what we were waiting for, or for how long, but we waited nonetheless.

Last month, we found a house on Craigslist. I guess one of the real reasons I didn’t tell many people about it is because I was expecting it to fall through. Honestly, I thought our time of waiting would be longer than just a few weeks. As per our usual, this story is a little weird…nay…miraculous 🙂

Basically, I was on CL one day just window shopping and trying to get an idea of what was out there. Although neither of us knew how long to wait, we both assumed something wouldn’t come our way until after the new year. We let our apartment go into a month-to-month lease which cost us an additional $100 in rent each month. We didn’t want to pay that much for very long, but figured it was fine for a few months.

Any-whoo. On that particular date, I got onto CL, and my eyes immediately went to a house about halfway down the page. It caught my eye because the square footage was 1,222. If you know me, you know my thing with this number (222). It’s like a secret code God uses to say “HEYYYYYYYY!!! Over here!” to me, so of course I clicked on the listing. Three bedroom, one bath, brick home, fenced in backyard, on a road with a cul-de-sac, Millbrook. Pretty much everything we had been hoping to find (it even has things that the other house didn’t). I almost didn’t reply to the listing because it was just too perfect, and we had no money for it.

Backtracking a little here. Since September I’ve been working as a medical transcriptionist as well as working as a waitress. The MT job will be my main job soon (in less than two weeks, actually!), but it only pays once a month. With that being the case, I went a full eight weeks of working there without a paycheck. My first paycheck was also cut in half in order to pay my trainer for the two months she spent training me (trust me…she deserved more than what she got). I won’t actually be getting my first FULL paycheck until the end of this month.

I kept my job waiting tables to get us through the transition period, but at the same time, I had to cut my hours in half to allow me to work as an MT. Things have been TIGHT to say the least. Really tight. Especially after the whole house fiasco. We lost about $500 on that due to the rent money we paid there and all of the disconnect/set up fees we had to pay to get the utilities stopped at our apt, turned on at the house, then stopped at the house, and turned back on at the apt. It was one big fat expensive mess.

So when I saw the CL listing, we no longer had enough money for a full deposit. Sigh. I just knew we wouldn’t be able to get the house, but I emailed the owners anyways to see if we could view it. I guess I just wanted to torture myself.

Benji and I talked before we went to see it and agreed that we were not going to rush things. We both agreed that A LOT would have to fall into place in order for it to work out. They’d have to be okay with us only having half of the deposit, and they’d also have to be okay with allowing us to wait 30 days before moving in so that we could give our current landlords notice. If these pieces of the puzzle didn’t fall into place smoothly and effortlessly, oh well. We would just keep waiting.

We went, and I pretty much fell in love. It’s right down the street from one of our favorite parks. It’s in a quiet neighborhood. They had just put new carpet in the week before we viewed it so it had that fresh new smell about it. It also had a layout similar to our home in Northport, so it felt strangely familiar upon entering. The backyard was big, flat, and fenced in and directly behind it was a creek. It was beautiful and peaceful and I remember standing there in the backyard and getting that feeling in my chest…that feeling you get when you want something you know you can’t have. I had to remind myself of my agreement with Benji…no rushing. If it was meant to be, things would fall into place. If not, well…there was no sense in longing for something that wasn’t meant to be ours. So I stuffed those feelings away, and put on a smile. We walked inside and I basically just blurted out our situation to the owners (I’ll refer to them as J and M. J is the wife, and M is the husband).

“We really like your house, but we can’t move in for 30 days, would that okay?”

“Yeah, sure. We’ll just need a deposit in order to hold it for you.”

“Well…about that…”

To my amazement, they were willing to work with us (sidenote: our appointment actually ran over and another couple came to view to house while we were there…so this made me even more grateful that they were willing to give us a shot).

We told them that we would go home and figure out just how much we could give them, and that we would call them back. I called them back later that evening and told them we could give them a little over half the deposit. M got on the phone and informed me that he didn’t want us to give them everything we could – he wanted me to put a little aside in case of an emergency. He asked that I give them a little less than what we could afford instead, and said they would hold the property for us. I was basically speechless. After the way we had been treated by the landlords at the previous house, this was a breath of fresh air. They seemed to genuinely care about our family.

Over the past month, they have worked with us time and time again to make sure everything fell into place. Our security deposit was finally paid in full, and we signed the lease last night. So it’s officially official now. We are moving in this weekend, and I just cannot wait.

I’m excited about the house, but I’m also excited about working with and knowing J & M. They are just two sweet, incredible people. Two retired veterans, who love Jesus and have been married for 44 years. They are both full of wisdom and I honestly love being around them. Just an example of their kindness (beyond working with us on everything!): one of the times that I met up with them, it was raining. M ran out to our car, with an umbrella, covered me and the children and ran us inside.

Like seriously, y’all. They are incredible, and we are just over the moon excited and thankful to be so well taken care of by Jesus. Even in spite of our doubt.